Well, Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!

I have continued to work on my paper, but it seems that I am getting slower on it because of repetition. It is hard to add parts without reading over the first 10 pages. I just found an article on the effect of not having classroom management and what that will do to teachers (burnout). I don’t know if I should add more types of classroom management techniques or if it will not add much substance to the whole paper.

I have been adding headers to my paper to help guide my reader. It has also helped me go back and read certain parts. I am hoping to get some input on how it is looking.

Summary of peer suggestions for my research

I remember in the past when I had to pass may paper for peer review; I would get very very nervous. Now, I enjoy it. It gives you ideas to improve your paper and it also help you see mistakes that you overlook.

Some of the suggestions from my peers:

• ·         Improve/ correct some of my grammar

• ·         Create a catching introduction that will catch my reader’s interest!

• ·         Split large paragraphs into smaller ones.

• ·         Backing up some of my quotes

They did find that my paper flowed in a nice way!  :) 

I know for a fact that I still have to add many of my resources to my page cited. I have really gotten into reading a lot and keeping notes in a notebook. I need to incorporate the information I have found to back up what I have already used in my paper.

I feel that I am on a role now. Now I can clearly see how someone must really narrow down what they are writing about because if it is too broad of a topic, you will end up with too much information that will not make sense.

Week six

So last week I met with Prof. Ridolfo. I was stressed because I did not know if I was on the right path. What I mean is that I didn’t know if I was approaching/locating the field conversation as directed. I eventually was told that I did find a field conversation. 

Since then I revisited the CECH Library and found more books on the topic. I also found another article that should add to my research. My goal now is to narrow my search. I want to see who has used these articles and how they have incorporated them in their books. I also want to see how this information can inform teachers and analyses the research with this advice.   

Our next 15 pages are due on November 15^th. If I slowly write a page every day I will be well in the date range. If I write faster, we should have no problem.

I am still not comfortable writing in Google docs. I noticed that copy paste from word is not so efficient.

I will call it a day!

Goodnight!

So I have been moving along on my research. I am still a bit unclear on how I am to pull the field conversation together. From what I understood field conversation is finding texts on my topic. I am also to observe what type of work has been done on my topic. And therefore I guess put them in relation to one another. Correct me if I am wrong! :)

 I was having difficulty on finding articles on classroom management in Mendeley. It was pulling up very many articles on education in general. I therefore logged on to UC’s library and did a journal search on Classroom management. I was lucky to find a very interesting article so I saved it on my desktop. Next I opened Mendeley and imported the article. As soon as I did that I saw a tab that said “related research” and BAM ! I found various journals on my topic.

Now, I see that on some journals there are details missing. I don’t know how to find those details and I also don’t know how to cite the journal from Mendeley.     

I am still a bit uneasy about writing in Google Docs. This will be my goal this week. So far I am writing in word.

Getting back to my articles… signing off

Mendeley

Monday October 10, 2011
So, Today it was my goal to learn how to use Mendeley . I am not a very computer savvy person so just having to download this program to the computer was stressful enough. I always feel like I am going to do something wrong to the computer (it is my daughters laptop).

So, I downloaded Mendely and it seems like a very interesting program. The program has a " Getting started with Mendeley" That goes over how Mendely works. To the right of the screen it shows that this particular document "Getting started with Mendeley" is a PDF file that was uploaded in this program. The same way, many other documents can be uploaded, read, and stored in one place. The Medeley program allows the user to read an abstract of the article, tags, keywords, the city, publisher, type of works, URL and it also offers a catalog ID.

The PDF offers information on how to add PDF's to Medeley. It's as easy as clicking the add document button on the left on the toolbar. Next it explains how to import/export EndNotes. I found that a bit difficult, but I guess if you don't play around with it you won't get the hang of it.

Mendely also offers Google Scholar Search. Just by looking up the document details with Google scholar in Mendely, it will find it!
As I said, It will take time to get a hand of it. For a person that does extensive research I believe that it is a great tool to know how to use.

Now my thoughts on 750words.com. I love it!! So far I am at 275 words. What that shows me is that it takes a lot of work to get up to 750words. It means commitment which in turn will produce a positive outcome (A research Paper). (307 words)

First Blog

I really dont know what I'm doing. I hope I have created this site correctly. Anyway.... Today I went to CECH educational library and got books pertaning to my research topic which will involve students on IEP's. I am excited! Now I need to sit and sort through all this material. Good Reading!